With most packages in which bird food is sold, it is necessary to pour the contents into a separate dispenser in order to feed the birds. Such dispensers are relatively expensive articles and the pouring of bird food can be time consuming. Furthermore the bird food can be spilt during pouring, which is wasteful and messy.
Some existing bird food packages can also serve as a food dispenser, but they suffer from various disadvantages, e.g. not sufficiently weatherproof, relatively large amount of material required, difficulty of manufacture due to large number of individual components, and the time-consuming task of converting the package into its dispensing configuration.
DE No. 3149939 A1 discloses a bird feeder with a bag containing bird food and a dispensing arrangement comprising a cup containing bird food in the bottom of the bag and a separate external trough with hooks for securing it to the cup. Since the cup is inside the bag, the arrangement is not readily reusuable as it is necessary to insert the cup into the bag before the bird food. Thus either the manufacturer would insert the cup or a customer would insert the cup into an empty bag before filling the bag with food. In the former case a new cup would be needed for each bag of food; the latter case would be time consuming and spillage of the food would be likely.